SCS Newsletter 5.5.24

Dear Salisbury Families:

May is a big month at Salisbury Community School! Our 5th graders kicked off the month in a big way when they held our annual "5th Grade Exhibition" presentations last Thursday- and they did a wonderful job! This coming week begins our three week Read-a-thon, and we are excited that its beginning lines up nicely with an-school visit on Monday by acclaimed author, athlete, photographer and adventurer Jan Reynolds. Our Read-a-thon will end in three weeks at "Family Literacy Night", which will take place on May 23rd and will feature author Matthew Dickerson.

But wait, there's more! The week of May 13th and 17th will have two exciting things. the 5th graders will be going to KEEC (Keewaydin Environmental Education Center) that week, and the other students will be hosting the bike trailer from Local Motion for our annual Bike Week! Don't worry 5th graders, you'll have plenty of chance to bike after KEEC!

We will also have combined band rehearsals with other schools to prepare for early June's combined band concert, and of course, all the usual good stuff that happens in our classrooms!

That's enough of me- this newsletter's going to have too much in it as it is! But there's so much to cover in May...

Best,

Bjarki

Monday, May 6th: Author visit with Jan Reynolds!

Friday, May 10th: All-School Band Practice at SCS (afternoon)

Wednesdays during May (Starting May 8th!): "Walk to School" in the morning on Kelly Cross Road.

Monday, May 13th-Friday May17th: 5th Graders at KEEC

Monday, May 13th- Friday May 17th: Bike Week K-4

Monday May 20th- Friday, May 24th: Bike Week Grade 5

Thursday, May 23rd: Family Literacy Night

Friday, June 14th: Last student day (projected)

FOSCS invites the SCS Community to come together to show our thanks and gratitude for the SCS Teachers and Staff that help our students grow and develop. As next week, May 6-10, is Teacher Appreciation Week, FOSCS is excited to bring you opportunities to share your support for our SCS Teachers and Staff:

SCS Appreciation Station: May 1 - 17

Come write a note of thanks, kudos, or gratitude, or even draw a picture of how much you love and support our SCS Teachers and Staff. Across the front office (from Miss Donna) there is an appreciation station set up with all the needed supplies. We invite everyone from the SCS Community to fill our box up with lots of love to show our support for the teachers and staff of SCS. These notes are collected every couple of days and will be presented back to every teacher and staff member of SCS.

- Friends of Salisbury Community School (FOSCS).

In Friday classes got out and did "Green-Up Day". We cleaned the school grounds as well as Kelly Cross and Holman Roads, and it was a beautiful day for it!

Last Thursday, our 5th Graders welcomed family and schoolmates as they presented their 5th Grade Exhibitions. Exhibition is an inquiry-based project where students pick a topic they are interested in that relates to the United Nations Sustainability Goals, research the topic with help of a mentor, create an "action" related to that topic, and then present about their work to an audience. Students this year learned about ticks, teen mental health, diesel trucks and the environment, protecting animals from trash, reducing plastic pollution, and endangered species. Great job 5th grade!

As described in the "Principal's Desk" section, we are going to have a whole month of celebrating literacy at Salisbury Community School. We have kicked off the Read-a-thon, where students find pledges that will sponsor their reading. The pledges usually are done by the minute (so 5 cents a minutes, for example, becomes $1.00 if the student reads for 20 minutes). The idea is to celebrate reading, to motivate students to read, to encourage communication about reading at home, all while raising funds for Friends of Salisbury Community School's (FOSCS) KEEC fund, an ongoing fund that FOSCS is starting that will help pay for KEEC in a sustainable way in the future. Pledge sheets and tracking forms went home last Friday, but let us know if we should send home more!

On Monday, May 6th, we are lucky enough to be joined by author Jan Reynolds, who has family ties to SCS and has been gracious in her interest in coming and sharing her adventures, insights, and experiences with our students. Jan has had too many amazing experiences and honors to properly summarize here (but do check out here website for details!), except to say that she truly has been both a pioneer and a powerful force for good, particularly in her work highlighting cultures (especially threatened and vanishing ones) around the world. We are excited to welcome Jan to SCS.

And then, on Thursday, May 23rd (note the new date!) we will be holding Family Literacy Night.

Our featured guest this year is Matthew Dickerson.. Besides writing about hunting and fishing in the Addison Independent, Professor Dickerson (he also teaches at Middlebury College) writes for a wide variety of audiences and ages- including fiction and non-fiction. We are excited to have him come and share his experiences as an outdoorsperson and writer with our community members of all ages.

So please support the Read-a-thon, and consider coming to Family Literacy Night!

Walk to school Wednesdays are coming back! During the month of May we will be walking to school to reduce pollution and to encourage students to be active. This event will take place on the Wednesdays of 5/8, 5/15, 5/22, and 5/29. We understand Salisbury Community School is located off a main highway which can make walking to school difficult for students, but we find a way! During our event busses and drivers will drop students off at the intersection of Kelly Cross Road and Holman Road at the normal drop-off time of 7:30-7:40. SCS staff will wait for students and then we will all walk the remainder of the way to school as a large group. Participating in these events supports our school in receiving the Bike Trailer mid May where students will learn and practice how to bike safely!

Happy walking!

- Ms. T (Sierra Thornton, SCS PE Teacher)

May is National Speech-Language Hearing Month, a time to raise awareness about speech and language disorders and a time to help all students, no matter how they communicate, to feel included in their school community.

Please read the following letter from our ACSD Speech Language Counselors which contains important information and thinking points for parents and educators alike.

Some may have notices a new gate on the road leading to the "Secret Soccer Field". Over last few weeks some folks decided it was fun to do doughnuts on the soccer field, tearing it up pretty badly. This is not the first time people have gotten wild back there, and without a gate there isn't a lot we can do about it, so we had ACSD facilities put one up. We will also be having the field "power raked" over the next few weeks to see if the damage can be easily fixed. If it needs more work, you'll probably hear about it in this newsletter, especially if we look for volunteers to lay down some topsoil and do some seeding.

Last month, Salisbury's Christine and Preston Turner very graciously gifted their incredible collection of rocks, minerals, and fossils to Salisbury Community School. They collected over many years, and curated an amazing collection that is notable in its variety of pieces and forms. We are excited by the possibilities of its inclusion in our work across the curriculum- when teachers first saw even a small piece of the collection they just started firing off ideas of different areas of study these could inform. Science, of course, but also, math, art, creative writing, and others. Thank you Preston and Christine; we will take good care of your efforts!

We would like to thank the generous organizations that made our Jeh Kulu residency possible: the Vermont Arts Council, ACEEF (Addison Central Educational Endowment Fund), and Neat Repeats in Middlebury.

Thank you so much- your gifts contribute greatly to our students' school and life experience, and allow us to bring even more art and music into our students' lives.

Thank you to the Salisbury Conservation Commission for coming and clearing blowdowns from our trails, and it the process making new stumps for our outdoor classrooms!

This fall, ACSD worked with Dr. Rebecca Eunmi Haslam to address issues of racial equity at MUMS and MUHS through a confidential study called The Listening Circles Project. Now we are extending her work to our elementary school students and staff.

The goal of the Listening Circles Project is to hear directly from students and staff about what we can do to eliminate racial harm and ensure everyone feels safe and valued at school. All students and staff at our elementary schools are invited to participate. To participate you must read and fill out this consent form (parents/guardians fill it out on behalf of their child.) Listening circles will begin at elementary schools as early as next week, so please fill out the form as soon as possible if you want your child to participate. Parents of elementary students who participate will also have an opportunity to meet with Dr. Haslam.

As part of her work with secondary students and staff, Dr. Haslam is finalizing a report and recommendations for the ACSD administration. The elementary portion of this work will also result in a report and recommendations. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us as ACSD works to make all students and staff feel safe and valued.

Along with the excitement of the eclipse can the excitement of learning ABOUT the eclipse, and ACSD and SCS, particularly under the vision and leadership of teacher Amy Clapp, really embraced the eclipse as a wonderful opportunity to engage with science learning. We are VERY proud to share the following media stories about eclipse learning and ACSD. Amy's 3-4 class is heavily featured throughout.

Here are links to the articles: the "buttons" below also contain the links, but they sometimes don't show up on some computers, so you can also click on these:

Link to Education Week article

Link to Vermont Public content